It was a HOOT of a courtship!!

Eugene Ware

Thursday

Apr 26, 2018 at 12:01 AM

An update on the Great Horned Owls on Presque Isle.

If my recall is correct, the first I heard the Presque Isle Great Horned Owl pair this season was during the first week of winter back in 2017. It was sometime between Christmas or somewhere just after New Year’s. It was a loud and ever present morning “Whoo! Whoo!. " It was usually broadcast in five or six syllables that drifted over the Presque Isle woods.

I took it as a "Whoo's awake? Me to!" sort of call. Many of the Presque Isle early morning crew have said they also noticed the calls. These calls are usually the first sign of the upcoming ritual of "owl" courtships. The calls are typically from the male owl. The female vocalizations are a bit higher in pitch and a bit shorter. This true even though the female is usually the bigger of the two.

Experts claim that the calling is greater overall after midnight. I cannot confirm this because Presque Isle Park is closed after dark. However, a friend of mine who has a cabin in a forest area near Oil City said this is very true. It seems Al had two Great Horned Owl pairs in the woods near his cabin. He said they drove him nuts after midnight all during January and February for two years.

By the time a new year arrives, most pairs likely have picked out a place to nest. They make their nest in hollow trees and in nests abandoned by other birds such as hawks and crows. Most Great Horned Owls do not usually use the same nest more than two years, with the exception of our Presque Isle pair, who is now are in their second year of using the same tree top snag home. Great Horned Owls are NOT good housekeepers, so usually, a nest is a total mess after one year or so.

The Presque Isle Owls have had an excellent mating and nesting season. At the present time, there appears to be at least two chicks in the nest and are being tended by the parents. It is a bit early to confirm the number of young in the nest, as they are just now beginning to pop their heads up. One sure way to spot a Great Horned Owl nest is to look for bulky nests in large deciduous trees. Every now and then, you might see what looks like a nest with ears. That'll be the female, hunkered down with only the top of her head showing. She is keeping the kids warm.

These owlets will take four or five weeks to mature once they hatch. They will ten need more time to fledge but also develop the complex hunting skills they will need.

The Great Horned Owl is generally colored for camouflage. The underparts of the species are almost always light with some brown horizontal barring. The upper parts and upper wings are also a mottled brown and are usually dense with darker markings. They may also have a variable sized white patch on the throat. All have a facial disc which can be reddish, brown or gray in color. The "horns" are tufts of feathers, called plumicorns. The purpose of the plumicorns is not fully understood. It may be that they are visual cues in territorial interactions with other owls.

The Great Horned Owl is the most cumbersome owl in North America, except for some Snowy Owls that are actually very close relatives. They are excellent hunters that use their eyes and ears. Since they hunt at night, locating prey by sound is vital. It's skull, which is nearly as wide as its body, sets its ears relatively apart and vertically offset from each other quite a bit. This allows them to triangulate the location of sounds extremely accurately.

Just looking at Owls in general, most people realize that they have huge eyes and hence must have very good eyesight. This is true. However, they have what is called tubular vision. This means that what they see is like what you and I look at when we see though a telescope. Very intense and strong, but with a profoundly small overall area coverage.

Owls also have limited abilities to move their eyeballs, so this has lead nature to provide the Great Horned Owl and most other owls with the ability to turn their necks 270 to 280 degrees. This means to see a more full field of vision, they must turn their heads.

These are beautiful birds and having them nest on the park is nature's gift to us all.

See you on the Park!!

Gene Ware is a published author of 8 books and is board member of the Presque Isle Light Station, the Tom Ridge Center Foundation and the Presque Isle Partnership. He is also a contributing writer for goerie.com Send questions and comments to ware906@gmail.com

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